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The second son of alleged criminal matriarch Miyoko Sumida was sentenced to 17 years in jail on Wednesday for his part in a spate of bizarre deaths linked to the family. The Kobe District Court found Yutaro Sumida, 28, caused the death of Mariko ...

A former member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult is appealing a Tokyo High Court decision in early March to uphold his nine-year prison sentence, court officials said Wednesday. The appeal by Makoto Hirata, 49, who had been on the run for almost 17 years ...

Benesse Holdings Inc. has learned of a new customer data leak at an education service unit, after the company was the target of Japan’s largest-ever data theft scandal last year. A temporary employee at Transcosmos Inc., a Benesse Corp. subcontractor for call-center operations, illegally ...

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The city of Otsu agreed Tuesday to settle a damages suit filed by the relatives of a 13-year-old boy who killed himself in 2011 after being bullied, agreeing to pay compensation and apologize for the way the school and the local board of education ...

Four asylum seekers from strife-riven Syria sued the central government at the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday, demanding that they be recognized as refugees. The move, the first of its kind by Syrians in Japan, represents a direct challenge to the government’s persistent reluctance ...

Riken has decided not to file a criminal complaint against Haruko Obokata, a former researcher at the government-affiliated research institute, over the high-profile STAP cell research scandal. Riken is expected to make a formal decision by the end of this month after approval from ...

A teenager in the Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa, apparently inspired by online video footage of recent gruesome killings of Japanese nationals by the Islamic State extremists, was arrested in February after attempting to kill a goat as “practice” for his plan to kill someone, ...

Prosecutors plan psychiatric tests to see whether a 40-year-old man can be held criminally responsible for a stabbing spree that left five people dead on Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture, earlier this month, investigative sources said. Tatsuhiko Hirano is under arrest on suspicion of killing ...

Police said Monday that an associate professor at a national university in Fukui Prefecture under arrest over the alleged murder of a student under his tutelage may have had some personal problems with her. Yasunori Maezono, 42, an environmental education specialist at Fukui University’s ...

A woman from Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, was arrested Monday on suspicion of trying to kill her husband after he failed to give her a present in return for her Valentine’s Day gift, investigators said. Mie Nishiyama, 43, self-employed, was arrested by officers who had ...

Messages posted on Twitter by a group of Japanese who defected to North Korea after hijacking a Japan Airlines jetliner to Pyongyang in 1970, and by their wives, have attracted more than 4,000 followers — and mostly harsh reactions — since starting last October. ...